Peter Britos

PETER BRITOS A Conversation with Merata Mita This conversation took place on January 15th 2003 at about 8pm in Honolulu. We met at Merata’s home offi ce near the campus where her youngest son Hepi is fi nishing up his high school studies. Hepi met me downstairs and escorted me to his mother’s study, where Merata was working on a book about her life experiences. PB: My mother once told me that the cool thing about talking is that sometimes you don’t know a thing existed until you say it. The mere physicality of the act brings you to a place that you couldn’t have gotten to any other way. MM: I’ve known things. And until I’ve articulated them, they’ve never been con- scious. I like the experience of new places and new things and working out how to survive in different environments that are totally different ones than I’m used to. But until you articulate that survival, it’s just living. Geoff [Murphy—her producer/director husband] never sees those challenges as being pleas- ant. But I thrive on that sort of thing. In the end I had to agree with him that we should move from Los Angeles. But I didn’t know where, and didn’t really care. And he always had in his mind that the ideal halfway point between Los Angeles and New Zealand would be Hawaiì. So I said aah Polynesians, hmmm. Okay. So we ended up here and he could make whatever film he was making. And I could go either to the United States or Release poster for Patu!, 1983 New Zealand to do work that I was doing. because I’m making this fi lm called Cousins, PB: Have you traveled to Hollywood often? and there’s this little area of visual effects, computer graphics, animation or something. MM: Well I worked on most of Geoff’s fi lms These are the kinds of things that are diffi cult that he made in Hollywood: Under Siege to learn in a country like New Zealand—but II with Steven Segal. The Last Outlaw with not now since Lord of the Rings. It’s now leapt Mickey Rourke. And Free Jack with Mick ahead. So I did that on Under Siege II. And on Jagger. And I realized that these were op- Free Jack I was very interested to see—that was portunities to learn more about my craft. the fi rst fi lm that I worked on with Geoff in When I worked on Under Siege II I asked if I Hollywood, was Free Jack with Mick Jagger—I could work in the visual effects department wanted to see the differences between how a Oceania in the Age of Global Media 53 Peter Britos, editor, Special Issue of Spectator 23:1 (Spring 2003) 53-62. A CONVERSATION WITH MERATA MITA for success... But that’s the other thing, is that in New Zealand and Australia you have the idea… Actually I’ll just talk about New Zea- land. I have friends in Australia, Aboriginal fi lmmakers, and they think the same things I do. You’re creating something and it has to do with art and it has to do with the conditions that the people are living in, and it has to do with the way society is developing, and it has to do with land and spirituality and the way we’re cut off from that. You know, fractured society. Or how much you remain welded to traditions that include those beliefs. And in Hollywood they have sets where there is no place for those things. And we don’t have a very good star system in New Zealand, thank goodness. Though we’re developing stars, Merata Mita in Utu, 1982 Courtesy of Geoff Murphy because New Zealand actors are working Hollywood big budget movie runs compared in Hollywood now, Maori actors like Cliff with New Zealand, and of course there was Curtis, Rena Owen, and Temuera Morrison. no comparison in the way the fi lms were set That’s an irony. I think about them with some up—but there’s a similarity in the ways the set kind of awe, because they’ve transcended the runs. But the sheer amount of money makes ethnic or cultural divide. They are big names it look as if you’re peering through a hole in in New Zealand now, and I laugh to myself the curtain, looking at aliens doing what you when I hear Geoff, my husband, who is white love to do, and that’s make fi lms. So that was and he’s a producer, talking about what a very strong learning thing for me; it doesn’t ‘name people’ they can have in their films matter how much money is being put into in New Zealand. And they’re Maori names. the picture. The picture wasn’t particularly But it had to happen to them in Hollywood successful, in spite of the amount of money, fi rst. To be considered star material at home because there’s no heart to it. There’s no soul is signifi cant. Rena, Temuera and Cliff have there. There was nothing you could relate to actually done movies with Steven Spielberg, and make you want to sit through that movie Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and so on. So and stay with it. And those things can’t be that enhanced their appeal in New Zealand. bought. You can buy a lot of special effects You have to succeed overseas before you can and costumes and all that kind of stuff, but be a success at home basically. And they suc- the heart and soul of the movie has to come ceeded in both worlds. Maori people are in from the people making it. awe of them because they can see that they’ve succeeded against huge odds, in the belly of PB: It takes more than a formula. the beast, and survived. And they are still the kinds of people you want to eat your lunch MM: It takes much more than a formula. with on the fi lm set. And that’s the biggest difference of course. Countries like Australia and New Zealand PB: In shows like Xena and Hercules I always when I fi rst started making fi lms were anti- look for Maori characters because it’s shot in New formulaic just by the sheer chaotic way they Zealand. But the Maori actors tend to play a cer- developed as colonies. That kind of chaos is tain kind of role that is outside the frame of the inherent to everything we do. So when you main story lines. They are the barbarians at the come to these tidy formulas that are designed gate, and every once in a while you get one who 54 SPRING 2003 MITA Maori people. PB: It’s similar to fi lm and TV shot in Hawaiì, except that in these stories the good guys and the bad guys and the love interests tend to be Cauca- sian. So the entire cast and story forms a closed hermeneutic circle wherein nothing escapes the gravitational authority of white romance and recuperation. With this in mind, tell me about the internal diacritics of New Zealand TV at its inception in terms of Maori versus Pakeha repre- sentation. How did Maoris feel about nationalist TV discourse in 1960 when New Zealand adopted the new medium? MM: I was around at the time and there was Renée O’Connor and Lucy Lawless star in an incredible reaction from Maoris about the Xena: Warrior Princess. way television was set up, as if we didn’t ex- will be a featured villain, but in general, while it ist, you know. It was totally white, as if only uses multiple mythologies, it’s a very homogenized the British colonizer occupied the land. The world that we are looking at. prevailing attitude at the time was that we didn’t matter. Whatever Pacific voice there MM: These things like Xena, I don’t enjoy was in Aotearoa, as we call New Zealand, them. But they were good training grounds didn’t matter because it was such a minority for a lot of Maori technicians who then went voice, and we were regarded as a people that on to Lord of the Rings and got more training. didn’t have a culture. They regarded them- So the pool is building. There’s an American selves as the cultured ones. If you look at New term that’s used in New Zealand a lot now; Zealand under a microscope, the only culture they call it crossover. And if you just had the it had was Maori culture, and of late a strong Maori stories running, the Pacifi c myths and Pacifi c component, meaning that many Pacifi c legends and let that fi ll the basis of the story, Islanders now settle in New Zealand and they the general belief is that no one would watch bring their culture with them. And recently it. But if you incorporate what’s known in the there has now been a strong infl ux of Asians. colonial education system in New Zealand, And they also bring their cultures with them. which is Greek legends, Roman legends and So the culture of Aotearoa is this mixed blend English legends, and you confuse those with of Asian and Pacifi c cultures. And when the a Pacifi c kind of identity, and backgrounds, All Blacks play, New Zealand’s world famous then this wonderful crossover thing happens.

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